The Jets are a team that specializes in unfulfilled promises. The promise of the 2023 season was the arrival of Aaron Rodgers, and it was dashed the moment his Achilles tendon rolled down the back of his leg in the season opener. The start of this season brought even more promise: While Rodgers sat out last year, the rest of the Jets roster joined one of the more talented teams in the league, and it wasn't hard to imagine a team that went 7-10, with Zach Wilson started most games and suddenly became a force after Rodgers regained his position. A 2-3 start caused a setback, but it also opened the door for promise. It was a trainer problem! With Robert Saleh in trouble and Nathaniel Hackett relieved of his duties as game manager, the Jets would finally – finally! – ready to transform into the great team the roster says they should be. Monday night's game against the Bills was a great opportunity for the Jets to finally make good on some of those promises.

Did we see a transformed and reinvigorated Jets team on Monday night? Well, the offense looked better than it was. Todd Downing's play opened up some running lanes for Breece Hall that had previously been hard to come by, and Rodgers had his best game as a Jet, throwing for 294 yards and two touchdowns. But is a team on the verge of a turnaround one that loses 23-20 at home to a struggling division rival? Is a team that has ironed out its inefficiencies one that scores a touchdown on four red zone drives, gets run over repeatedly by Ray Davis and Ty Johnson, misses two field goals and commits 11 penalties? The Jets under Saleh were a team that dropped far too many passes, drew far too many flags and regularly made all kinds of mistakes. Our first look at the post-Saleh Jets shows that this is still a team that drops way too many passes, draws way too many flags and just knows how to redeem itself from stupid mistakes.

The big fumble in Monday night's game was a holding penalty on Tyron Smith that negated a walk-in touchdown by Braelon Allen. Down to the 14, Rodgers threw an incompletion throw on third down, and then Greg Zuerlein failed on the field goal attempt. A drive with first-and-10 at the opponent's 12 and a score of 0 points can be considered unlucky. However, this has happened enough times with the Jets in recent years that it becomes harder to interpret each incident as anything other than the result of incompetence.

But even after all of that, the Jets were still in a good position to win the game. With just under four minutes to go, the ball was in the hands of Aaron Rodgers. He told reporters after the game that he was brought to New York to win this type of game. When Rodgers signed with the Jets, fans probably couldn't imagine that too many one-score games would end with him throwing an underthrow interception.

And there the game ended, with another mistake, another bad choice or missing detail. When asked about the game during his post-game press conference, Rodgers suggested that his throwing was so bad because he thought Mike Williams was running in one direction at the start of his throwing motion, and then tried to change the ball's trajectory end to change second.

Rodgers finished the game with 294 passing yards, meaning he still hasn't surpassed 300 yards in a single game since Week 14 of the 2021 season. Any belief in this Jets team has always been based on the assumption that, at 40 years old, Rodgers is still one of the best quarterbacks in the league. He looked a bit like that last night when he even scored one of his patented Hail Mary touchdowns to end the first half. But the lasting image of this game will be that of Rodgers limping across the pitch after one too many goals and then sending everyone home with a panicked pass to the other team.

But hey, the good news is that there are always more promises to be made. This morning the Jets traded for Davante Adams. Once he and Rodgers are back on the field together, the NFL better watch out. This is a team that could make it to the top!